Tag Archives: NIMBY

San Francisco neighbors of Twitter founder don’t want his teardown house

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Even people with lots of money can run into problems when they want to build a teardown McMansion:

Williams bought the $2.9m property – hardwood floors, an open plan salon and four bedrooms with breathtaking views over three storeys – last year. It was built in 1915 by the architect Louis Christian Mullgardt and was listed in city records as a “potential historic resource”.

Earlier this year Williams, 40, and his wife Sara revealed plans to demolish the house and, with the help of architectural firm Lundberg Design, build a 7,700 sq ft successor into a slope. It would be 20ft lower than its predecessor and be a “zero net energy” home using solar panels, a green roof and sun-friendly windows.

Even before the application was submitted to city planners, neighbours and critics from as far afield as Canada had filed form letters of protest, a backlash which in another medium might have been called trending. “This is such a unique property and it adds diversity of architectural interest to the neighborhood,” wrote one neighbour, Elizabeth Wang. “It would be criminal to demolish it.”

Some accused Williams of plotting to erect a McMansion. “A complete teardown of such a home would … set the stage for numerous future demolitions that will alter the character of our beloved SF Neighborhoods,” one group, Friends of Parnassus Heights, wrote to the real estate blog SocketSite…

Not all agree. Williams’s defenders, such as property site Sfcurbed.com, said Mullgardt was an “architectural footnote” and that in any case his original design was ruined by a 1970s remodelling. “It may have once been charming, but … has been stripped of its dignity and details over the decades, subdivided into apartments and then rebuilt by architect Thomas Eden in what’s best described as faux-Frank Lloyd Wright with trapezoidal windows.”

Is it still NIMBY if a person in Canada is objecting to a possible house in San Francisco?

It appears that even the green features of the home will not mollify some of the neighbors. If the house can’t/won’t be saved, is there anything Williams could do to make the new home palatable to the neighbors? I wonder if Williams has made any efforts to reach out to the neighborhood. What about an ultra-green house that is built in a similar style to the existing homes?

Of course, one way to avoid these situations or to at least make more clear the process by which changes to homes can be made is to declare the area a historic preservation district. If a majority of neighbors are indeed against new houses, perhaps this is the way to go.

 

George Lucas to his weathly neighbors: if you don’t want my new studio, I’ll sell my land for affordable housing

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An interesting NIMBY battle is continuing in Marin County, California between George Lucas and his neighbors. Here is the latest:

Skywalker Properties abandoned the plans in an acerbic two-page letter [PDF] to its neighbors: “Marin is a bedroom community and is committed to building subdivisions, not business,” it read. (“It was, by his own admission, a bit edgy,” Peters says.) The letter concluded by suggesting that if people felt the land was best suited for more housing, Lucas would aim to sell it to a developer who would at least create the kind of housing Marin really needs: not more million-dollar homes, but low-income residences…

The plan, now in its early stages, is for Lucas to transfer the property to the Marin Community Foundation, which will work with a nonprofit developer to build the housing, as it has with similar low-income projects throughout the area. (Peters prefers the term “workforce housing” given the stigma attached to its more common moniker. To illustrate the perception he is up against, one wealthy neighbor cried to the New York Times that Lucas was “inciting class warfare” by inviting poor people to move in.)…

Peters would like to put about 300 apartment units on the property, which would again take up only a small portion of the remaining 200 acres. Given all the protected space around Lucas’s properties here, it’s unlikely any of the neighbors would even be able to see such a development. Most of the Marin Community Foundation’s other housing projects have been developed along transit corridors. But because this location is more remote, Peters envisions that, at first, this site may be best suited for low-income elderly. Marin also has the highest proportion of aging residents of any county in California.

Peters is quick to add, too, that in Marin County a family of four earning nearly $90,000 a year is eligible for housing assistance (for further perspective on the local housing market: “I forget that you have to translate here that a million-dollar house is not a mansion, by a long shot. They’re very comfortable homes.”) And so the popular imagination – “you’re going to bring drug dealers” was another complaint in the Times – is at odds with the reality of what affordable housing really means in this economy, and who needs help obtaining it.

It’s a strange world where wealthy people can poke each other in the eye by threatening to build affordable housing. I guess we’ll have to wait and see how the neighbors respond but I wouldn’t be surprised if they fight this with the same vehemence they fought Lucas’ plans. Clearly, more affordable housing is needed here but wealthy residents fighting a NIMBY campaign can be quite powerful.

Naperville cites traffic concerns and proximity to a residential area in rejecting McDonald’s near downtown

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Naperville’s City Council voted Tuesday against a proposal from McDonald’s to build a restaurant just south of downtown. The cited reasons: traffic and proximity to a residential area.

The City Council unanimously turned down the proposed fast-food restaurant at the southeast corner of Washington Street and Hillside Road citing concerns about traffic at an already busy intersection and locating a 24-hour business close to homes…

The proposal was backed by both city staff and the plan commission. However, in a discussion that lasted more than an hour, councilmen focused on the potential for traffic tie-ups…Addressing the myriad of traffic concerns, William Grieve, a traffic engineer hired by McDonald’s, said a traffic study showed travel time through the intersection would only increase by about a second and double drive-through lanes would prevent backups.  Stillwell said the company would be diligent about addressing any problems if they arise…

But traffic wasn’t the only concern. Neighbors said they feared there would be increased noise and lights coming from the restaurant if it was allowed to stay open 24 hours as proposed.

Both Judy Brodhead and Joe McElroywere among the councilmen who agreed and said having a restaurant open 24 hours so close to homes was a deal-breaker regardless of the traffic issues.

I’m not surprised by this result: not too many residents would willingly choose to have a McDonald’s nearby and few people want more traffic. However, this seems a bit strange for a few reasons:

1. Washington is already a fairly busy road.

2. This intersection is near homes but there are already strip mall type establishments at this corner. In fact, I’m not sure there any homes that back up directly to this site as the DuPage River is to the east and all of the corners at the intersection are already occupied. The McDonald’s would replace a Citgo gas station, not exactly a paragon of civic architecture. Across the street is a Brown’s Chicken establishment. The other two corners include a cemetery and another strip mall type establishment.

3. The traffic study from McDonald’s seems to suggest there wouldn’t be any issues.

4. I wondered if this had anything to do with protecting the downtown but it is three blocks south of the downtown so it shouldn’t contribute to congestion problems there.

I wonder if there isn’t more to this story. Indeed, here are a few more details from the Daily Herald:

Council members admitted they were initially thrilled that McDonald’s wanted to open a downtown store on the southeast corner of Hillside and Washington streets. But when it came down to a plan that included five zoning variances, three landscape variances and a sign variance, they just weren’t lovin’ it.

So the McDonald’s required too many deviations from Naperville’s guidelines? While the restaurant might have needed 9 variances, the city could have made it happen if they really wanted to. Just how much did the pressure from the neighborhood matter?

Builders constructing denser, more urban developments in the suburbs

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USA Today reports that more builders are constructing denser suburban subdivisions:

The nation’s development patterns may be at a historic juncture as builders begin to reverse 60-year-old trends. They’re shifting from giant communities on wide-open “greenfields” to compact “infill” housing in already-developed urban settings…

“It’s the kids (ages 18 to 32), the empty nesters (Baby Boomers with no kids at home),” says Chris Leinberger, president of Smart Growth America’s LOCUS (Latin for “place”), a national coalition of real estate developers and investors who support urban developments that encourage walking over driving. “These two generations combined are more than half of the American population.”…

Most major builders have created “urban” divisions in the past five years to scout for available land in already-developed parts of cities and closer suburbs — even if it means former industrial and commercial sites or land that may require environmental cleanup…

Even traditional communities built on greenfields are transforming. In Southern California’s Inland Empire, an area where housing prices are lower and appeal to first-time buyers, Brookfield is building Edenglen in Ontario. The homes are built on smaller lots — 4,500 square feet instead of the more conventional 7,200 square feet — and priced from $200,000 to $300,000.

This phenomenon has been noted by a number of commentators in recent years though I wonder if it will last.

A few other consequences of this for suburbs:

1. How will existing suburban residents respond to dense, infill projects? I would guess that a good number of suburbanites would object to these dense projects being built near them, spoiling their neighborhoods.

2. Related to the first question about NIMBYism, how will these new developments change the character of existing suburbs? If a community is used to wide suburban streets and big lots, narrow lots and denser housing could change things.

3. This article hints at this but this could also be a product of the age of many American suburbs. Outside of the suburban fringe or exurbs, many suburbs not have at least a few decades of history and perhaps little to no open land (reaching build-out). If these suburbs want to continue to grow (boosting revenues and fees as well as prestige), infill development might be the only choice.

4. This article makes a common claim: certain generations (emerging adults and baby boomers) desire more urban kinds of housing. However, I wonder if it less about generational differences and more about the changing structure of American households. Is the increasing number of single households (which might be located more in these generations) really driving this? If so, this would be have bigger effects as the American suburbs have traditionally been communities build around family life and child-rearing.

YMCA survey: 58% of Americans would move if they could

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A new survey commissioned by the YMCA suggests that more than 50% of Americans want to move out of their current neighborhood:

The Y Community Snapshot found:

  • 58 percent of respondents say they would move away from their community right now if they could, but the economy and their financial situations make moving increasingly difficult and not an option. Unable to move, Americans are putting more responsibility on local governments and themselves to impact change;
  • 63 percent of respondents say they will get more involved in their communities this year and will contribute goods, services, facilities or other non-monetary resources to a worthy cause or organization;
  • 76 percent of respondents say they are concerned about crime in their community, and according to a recent Gallup poll, nearly half of Americans say there is more crime where they live today than there was a year ago. A safe environment ranked as the most important quality in building a strong community;
  • The vast majority of respondents (72 percent) reported that budget cuts by government, social services and non-profit community organizations have had a negative impact on themselves and their families, with 22 percent saying they’ve felt a big negative impact.

The results to the individual questions may make sense: Americans have always been a mobile people (though mobility is down in recent years due to the economic crisis), Americans tend to be worried about crime even when crime rates are down (how likely is it that major crime rates are down and more than 50% of Americans say crime is up in their particular neighborhood?), and people are unlikely to respond favorably to budget cuts that impact them.

But I’m intrigued by how you would put all of these figures together: do Americans think there are a lot of wealthy, low crime, service-rich neighborhoods out there? Is this simply a case of “the grass is greener on the other side” or is everyone truly aiming to reach these fantastic neighborhoods? Even if there are enough neighborhoods that might fit this bill, how many of these great neighborhoods would not throw open their gates but would instead hunker down and restrict access and new development that might change their paradise?

City wants to avoid McMansion development because the new residents would then demand upgrades to the sewege treatment plant

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I’ve seen a number of objections to McMansions over the years but I’ve never seen this particular argument made by the city of Santa Rosa, California:

Santa Rosa has renewed its interest in buying a former dairy to create a buffer zone at the regional sewage treatment plant on Llano Road…

The dairy is no longer in operation, but part of the property continues to be leased as pasture, Maresca told the board. There also are four rental homes on the property and a cellular tower.

The property has previously been marketed as suitable for as many as seven “McMansions” with “little hobby vineyards,” Maresca told the board.

That’s what the city wants to avoid. If such homes were built near the plant, future neighbors might complain about noise, odors and glare from plant operations and try to force the city to spend millions in upgrades.

So the city wants to avoid McMansions because it will then lead to spending more money on the sewage treatment plant? This is an unusual rationale: cities often avoid McMansions because of concerns about teardowns or homes that “don’t fit” with the character of the community or objections to sprawl. This is out of concern about possible NIMBY concerns that the city wouldn’t want to deal with. This is one way to try to avoid NIMBY situations…

There could be other ways around this issue rather than framing it as an issue of trying to avoid future problems. Why not purchase the land and then zone it for a commercial or industrial or agricultural use (apparently on the table before) that wouldn’t be so harmed by being near the sewage treatment plant? Why not make it some sort of park or open space (also on the table before)? It seems odd to me to argue about contentious future residents rather than framing this as an opportuntiy for the city to make better use of this land.

One does have to wonder: how bad is it near this sewage treatment plant if Santa Rosa is really concerned about how much the McMansions residents might complain?

Request from DuPage mosque for 50-60 foot tall structure rejected

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I’ve been tracking the cases of several proposals for mosques in DuPage County and one of the cases was in the news yesterday because of a ruling that did not allow a variance for the 50-60 foot tall structure:

During a heated hearing that included accusations from the public of demagoguery and religious insensitivity, the DuPage County Development Committee failed to endorse the plan on a 3-3 vote. The committee’s ruling followed a rejection of the proposal by the DuPage County Zoning Board of Appeals, said committee Chairman Tony Michelassi, who voted in favor of the project.

The group previously tried to win approval for a 69-foot dome and a 79-foot minaret when the County Board first considered construction of the mosque. Amid fierce opposition, construction of the religious center on 91st Street near Illinois Highway 83 was approved while a waiver to build the higher dome and minaret was denied…

MECCA leaders most recently sought a waiver to construct a dome that would peak 50 feet off the ground and a 60-foot minaret, the tall spire from which the faithful are traditionally called to prayer.

But with a cap on the height of new religious buildings set at 36 feet in residential areas, the group could not realistically construct a dome and minaret that are functional and true to religious custom, Daniel said.

Opponents of the mosque have said, among other things, that the structure would be obtrusive. The faith of future MECCA congregants has nothing to do with their opposition, nearby residents say. They noted that six churches of different denominations peacefully coexist in the neighborhood.

This continues to be a very interesting case: 50-60 feet tall is roughly 5 to 6 stories. This is considerably taller than many suburban buildings (where apartment buildings over a few stories are generally rare) but perhaps more in line with a tall traditional church steeple (though fewer churches desire steeples these days).

This case hinges on new zoning laws regarding religious structures passed by DuPage County in 2011. Here is some of the debate about this zoning change as recorded by the Daily Herald in October 2011:

DuPage officials say the zoning changes are needed because unincorporated residential areas don’t have the infrastructure needed to support new places of assembly. Existing roads, sewers, and septic and well systems weren’t designed for the uses, they argue.

However, DuPage officials dropped a controversial idea to prohibit new places of assembly in residential neighborhoods. The existing proposal allows new places of assembly in residential areas as long as certain requirements are met.

County board member Grant Eckhoff said the goal is to balance the rights of property owners and their neighbors. The proposed regulations give groups the opportunity to seek construction projects while protecting “the essential character” neighborhoods, he said…

The new rules also place greater restrictions on the size of religious buildings. Another suggestion is to prohibit organizations from converting an existing single-family house into a place of worship.

I noted the final 16-0 vote in favor of these limits on religious congregations that took place shortly after the above Daily Herald article. These new regulations seem to be primarily on the side of existing residents as it is the religious group that must prove that their structure does not put a hardship on the neighborhood. In other words, the religious group must have the support of the neighborhood at the very least to get a variance to the regulations approved.

Preserving “authentic” spaces can lead to more “contrived and uniform places”

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While I haven’t read the book, I was intrigued by this one paragraph that describes sociologist Sharon Zukin’s argument in her recent book Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Spaces.

Sharon Zukin’s Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places signals its ambivalent relationship to Jacobs’s work in its subtitle, which both echoes Jacobs and argues with her legacy. Zukin’s argument is that Jacobs’s city is as much an artificial construct as any other, and that its imposition on living cities has tended to create mummified museums of urbanism rather than vibrant and authentic centres of human life: above all, it has unleashed the wave of middle-class-friendly gentrification that has made the special into the commonplace, the characterful into the bland, the human into the corporate. It seems that the more people insist on authenticity and individuality, the more contrived and uniform places become. Zukin uses New York to illustrate the problem: if you don’t know the city, you will definitely be at a disadvantage, as she wanders through streets and districts providing a sometimes illuminating, sometimes irritating commentary showing the ways in which the city has lost — or rather sold — its soul.

Authenticity: something that many people want but it is hard to find in places and perhaps even harder to maintain.

This reminds me of some ideas I’ve run into in recent years. One ASA presentation I saw a few years ago addressed this very issue by looking at a neighborhood that was just on the edge of gentrification in Chicago. This means the neighborhood hadn’t quite yet been overrun by wealthier, white residents but it had enough artists and wealthier residents to be clearly on the rise. The argument was that soon this place was going to tip into gentrification, meaning the true grittiness of the neighborhood would be scrubbed away as people moved in looking for “authentic” urban living.

Additionally, you could argue that wanting to preserve authenticity is behind many NIMBY efforts. Once having moved into a place, residents want to preserve what they liked in the first place, sometimes going so far that it seems like they wish they could have frozen that place in time. In these cases, residents are often fighting against outsiders and trying to promote their own vision of an authentic neighborhoods. In the end, few, if any, places can really be frozen in time except maybe corporatized spaces like Main Street U.S.A. at DisneyWorld. Places change and might go through cycles when they are authentic and then become inauthentic.

So how exactly do you get authentic places? This particular reviewer doesn’t like Zukin’s suggestion that government should help guide this process. I might chime in that government in the past has been known to promote its own interests or the interests of wealthy businesspeople over residents. At the same time, if we leave everything up to an unfettered market, authentic spaces tend to get commodified, taken over by wealthy residents, and influenced by corporations. I would guess that Zukin prefers to have places where residents have a say in what happens in the neighborhood, that everything isn’t decided by outside forces and that government can act as a referee to look out for the interests of current residents.

A reminder: there are plenty of people who have a stake in whether a place is authentic or not and this complicates everything.

High rents and the lack of politics

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Forbes recently published a two part interview with law professor David Schleicher discussing his recent paper City Unplanning.  Schleicher discusses the perversity of zoning restrictions and begins by noting that, in many cases, rents and rental units available have nothing to do with each other:

In a number of big cities, new housing starts seem uncorrelated or only weakly correlated with housing prices and the result of increasing demand while holding supply steady is that price went up fast. The average cost of a Manhattan apartment is now over $1.4 million and the average monthly rent is over $3,300.

The only explanation is that zoning rules stop supply from increasing in the face of rising demand.

Effectively, Schleicher argues that new developments in big cities are subject to a form of NIMBYism which is effective to the extent it is apolitical:

Local legislators may prefer more development than we have now to less, but have stronger preferences for stopping development in their districts because these projects would hurt homeowners in their neighborhoods—either directly through things like increased traffic or indirectly through increasing the supply of housing, harming the value of existing houses.

This is a prisoner’s dilemma and absent a political party to organize the vote in local legislatures, one-by-one votes on projects will result in “defect” results, or situations where every legislator builds coalitions to block projects in their own district and nothing gets built [emphasis added].

I couldn’t quite understand Schleicher’s point from the interview, but it is much better explained in the full paper:

Importantly, most cities do not have competitive party politics – they either have formally nonpartisan elections and/or are entirely dominated by one party that rarely takes local-issue specific stances. Absent partisan competition, there is little debate over citywide issues in local legislative races and there is no party leadership to organize the legislature, making the procedural rules governing the manner in which the legislature considers land use issues far more important. The content of the land use procedure generates what one might call “localist” policy-making: seriatim [i.e., one-off] decisions about individual developments or rezonings in which the preferences of the most affected local residents are privileged against more weakly-held citywide preferences about housing.

It’s an intriguing thesis positively, but I’m not sure what I think of Schleicher’s point normatively.  Local voters generally do seem to prefer NIMBY outcomes in order to avoid threats (e.g., increased traffic, lowered property values) to their existing assets (i.e., homes and businesses).  But if local voters achieve this result through the mechanics of “weak” local politics, isn’t that an example of the political system “working”?

Put another way, high rents may be undesirable, but they are largely an outsider problem.  Current residents (insiders who can vote) first and foremost want to protect themselves from the problematic vicissitudes of new development (which will, if it is built, be populated with outsiders who obviously cannot vote unless it is built and they take up residence).  If current residents/voters achieve this goal through voting for “apolitical” council members, (1) isn’t this actually a highly political choice, and (2) isn’t this precisely how voting and elections are designed to work?